Happy Chinese New Year!

Yes, this is Valentine's Day. But February 14, 2010, is also the Chinese New Year. In honor of the Year of the Tiger, I would like to present five Asian themed outfits from five of Second Life's exciting designers.

First, I present Tang from !Terra D'ombrA. maizon Rayna is an amazing designer who is not only creative, but understands how clothing should flow over a woman's body.

This dress is feminine, functional and fun! The soft Asian-styled texture does not overpower you, but adds to the natural grace of the wearer.

The high necked, sleeveless top, capri length pants and open skirt all combine for a classic look. This is an outfit you can wear every day and never grow tired of it.

maizon is also an excellent jewelry designer! The belt is sold with the Tang dress. The necklace and earrings are her Etrusca set. A perfect match to the dress. Zhao Shoes' Clover adds to the charm of this Chinese themed dress.

Be sure to stop in at !Terra D'ombrA today and look at her other stunning designs.


When you hear the name Angel Dessous, most people immediately think lingerie. They are, of course well known for their sexy intimate wear, but take a look at Misaki Asia.

This is a breath-taking gown combining unique textures and accents into a stunning presentation. A large black bow in back, black opera length gloves and a very imaginative fan and flower shoulder attachment add to the charm. Be sure to check all 7 colors of the Misaki dress! Each is a work or art.

Alienbear's Ambroisa II black Pearl set seems made for this dress, as well as Indyra Original's Coquette Noir Shoe Medaille Pharaoh's Gold pumps.

Finally, I could not resist using Tukinowaguma's Nastassja hair to create an elegant look for a New Year celebration.

Never again will I think of lingerie when I hear Angel Dessou.


Tradition meets futuristic in Nomine's Cyber Cheongsam. Munchflower Zaius blended the cheongsam styled top with a seductive and sexy skirt to create a fantasy outfit to rival the best.

Again, we have a designer who has managed to find incredible textures that bring to life the Chinese design.

The top, traditional looking from the front has a surprisingly open back with criss-crossing corset strings. The skirt, two wide panels front and back, completely exposes the legs in a sexy and provocative way. From the open fingered, opera length gloves hang wrist to elbow sleeves that hang to the floor.

Only addition to this striking ensemble is enkythings' Fujin Saena pumps.

Cyber Cheongsam brilliantly brings eastern culture together with Sci Fi.


Bare Rose is very well known for having any theme outfit you could dream up. And today is no exception.

Zeku is an adorable and sweet pant suit with a high-waisted flexi duster jacket that goes all the way to the floor. The texture is a beautiful flower print in 4 rich colors in the one outfit. That's right - 4 colors for the price of 1!

As long as the jacket length is, the top is cut high just below the breasts with flexi ties holding it closed and leaving the midsection coyly exposed.

Matching belted pants and choker complete this sweet and innocent look.


Finally, what Chinese Dynasty would be complete without an Empress! Of course I am speaking of Nicky Ree's Tang Empress gown.

Available in 8 vibrant colors, any woman would be a queen dressed in this gorgeous gown.

Wear it in full royal form or as a long sleek evening gown.

Bijoux Or Design's Christine set gold/green is the ideal accent for this Gem of the Orient.



Whether celebrating the Chinese New Year in casual or formal wear, celebrate in style!

Outfit #1: !Terra D'ombrA - Tang
Skin: [LeLutka] - New York SunKissed-makeup6b
Hair: kyoko's Hair Shop - ww*hair-066:Black
Shoes: Zhao Shoes - Clover Black/Silver
Jewelry: !Terra D'ombrA - Etrusca

Outfit #2: Angel Dessous - Misaki Asia
Skin: Unique Megastore - Afrodite_2G-A2_M12_by_Nany_Merlin
Hair: Tukinowaguma - Nastassja ebony
Shoes: Indyra Original - Coquette Noir Shoe: Medaille: Pharaoh's Gold
Jewelry: Alienbear Design - Ambroisa II black Pearl set

Outfit #3: Nomine - Cyber Cheongsam
Skin: Belleza - Belle sk Meows & Cherries
Hair: Goldie Locks Hair - Amaterasu - Black
Shoes: enkything - Fujin Saena

Outfit #4: Bare Rose - Zeku
Skin: FIOR DI PERLE - Liz Pale smokey pink makeup pink1 lips
Hair: Exile - Molly/twilight
Shoes: enkything - Tagona II Snake Purple

Outfit #5: Designing Nicky Ree - Tang Empress Gown - Green
Skin: Pulse Skin - Timeless ll/Makeup 14
Hair: Tukinowaguma - Brooke (Gold) ebony
Shoes: Juicy - Classic Pump - Lime
Jewelry: Bijoux Or Design -Christine set gold/green

When I was a noob, I spake as a noob, I understood as a noob, I thought as a noob..

...but when I became a few weeks old, I put away noobish things. (blasphamously paraphrased from 1 Corinthians 13:11)

Yesterday was my Second rezday in SL. I would have posted this then, but I only realized it was indeed the 23rd, somewhat late in the day, and I'm lazy. I can remember that day all to clearly though. An aquaintance of mine, from a Sims forum, hadn't been around much, and when she popped in, she explained that she'd been playing Second Life, and recieved much mocking for it. A few others admitted that they too had accounts, and so I decided I should go see what it was all about. In those days, I was familiar mostly with mmorpgs, cheap ones at that, Runescape, for example, and so once I'd signed up (I messed up on the signup form, Barbosa was my second choice of last name, after I locked the one I wanted), I diligently went through the tutorial sections on Orientation Island. To your left-ish, you will see the first ever photograph taken of Nivaya Barbosa (at 5.41pm, indeed). Of the four tutorials, the first I went for was Appearance, and took it quite seriously, treasuring my free chainmail shirt, and tweaking and tinting and flaring and generally 'customizing' myself with a freedom I was quite unaccustomed to, until I came to a look I was sure would be considered perfectly acceptable and even quite beautiful, once I'd finished the tutorials. I certainly didn't look like the rest of my fellow noobs on the island. I sailed through the rest of the mission-based tasks the Lindens gave me to prepare me fully for my new life (flying took a bit of getting the hang of), and went mainlanding! I landed in Korea 2, in a lagpile the likes of which are rarely seen these days, a mass of grey bodies on top of each other, unable to move or fly, there was a person wearing a box you could click, and all sorts of confusion. Eventually I used my new-found flying skills to escape to somewhere empty-looking, and employing the power of SEARCH, looked for Newcomer-Friendly places, with the keyword 'Free'. I ended up at Curious Kitties, where I found all sorts of pretty things I was sure I'd never ever be able to afford (ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MONIES?!). It wasn't until relatively recently I realised that the avatar I'd started out with, and right away, let's be honest, destroyed, in my zeal to make my own things(!), Haragyaru Female, was made by Ameshin Yossarian, the very person whose things I'd longed for in those early minutes. So, to make amends for my noobish ignorance, here I am, rocking the clothes I was born in, with my own shape, a rather more up-to-date skin, and the system hair tinted to my beloved red.

As the minutes passed, I discovered there were chairs I could sit on for a few minutes that would give me free money (gold? dollars? I had no idea what the money was called), and even better, that there were places where people went and danced, and one of them, The Space Lounge, had a sign you could click and then keep walking around, and it would STILL give you free money, if you stayed near it. I constantly wore freebie wings, a cigarette, and a Space Lounge Bling Necklace I won. Life was good. It was when I started working there, that I met Persephone, and, a short while later, the man who I ended up marrying in the RLz. Slowly, I learned the value of prim hair (thank you Gurl6), changing ones clothes, and, rather later than most, I must confess, non-system skins.

I like to think I've come a long way in two years.


Credits:

Pic 1:

All nooby goodness!

Pic 2:

Skin: Celestial - Vogue - Pure - Classic Glitter - Gold 2
Eyes: Miriel - Marine (standard)
Everything Else: Haragyaru Girl starter avatar (available in a box of old library content at Stillman's Bazaar)

Pic 3:

Skin: Naive - Camille skin - Light Brunette 01 Lips 02
Hair: KIN - Liv - Red
Shirt: Toastface - Candyheart T-shirt
Pants: Veschi - Jeanius! - Gold
Jacket: Bare Rose - Pirate Queen Version 3 - Dark Jacket (worn with shoulder and upper-arm prims only)
Shoes: Schadenfreude - Pointy Buckle Boots
Gloves: Digit Darkes - CAP gloves Black/Gold (worn with Gold bows)
Necklace: Balderdash - Rosary - Coal (I treated myself to this and the hand version, which is epic win, yesterday <3)
Lashes: Sin Skins - Tipped Vanity Lashes

Pose credits:

2nd pic: Schadenfreude - Hyper Japanese Schoolgirl
3rd pic, left to right: [LAP] Yup, [LAP] Not Buying It

Low ARC FTW!

It's that time of year again folks! Now we're running out of holidays to overcelebrate in Second Life, the Fair cycle is beginning! What this means for us, in the very shortest terms, is lag, and lots of it. There are a lot of things you can do clientside to make life a little easier, the simplest of which being to turn your graphics settings down to looooow. The next thing you can do, for yourself, is, for the love of all the little pixels, prim down. There are always disputes on this matter, there are the people who say "It's not what you're wearing, it's the scripts running on the sim", or "There are so many people here, taking my skirt off isn't going to help with the lag", personally, I'm of the school of thought of "every little helps". Exchanging your long flowing alpha curls for a sleek prim bob may not magically unlag a sim, but it does fractionally reduce the strain on the area, and that is a fact, one where if everyone worked together, instead of standing around complaining about the lag, could really make an tangible difference.

So really, it's the time of year where bloggers and strangers lecture you about being considerate to your fellow avatars, and stripping off some prims. I will be no exception.

I will admit right now, that there are laggy occasions where, yes, you DO care what you look like. No-one (no-one stylish, at least) likes being bald and barefoot in public. Call it paranoia, but I, for one, like to feel like I don't look as if I've just waddled off of Help Island when I go to a fashion show, for example. So, it helps to know what things in your inventory carry a low Avatar Rendering Cost. ARC is not the be-all-and-end-all of lag-reduction, it's a flawed system, but using a combination of it, and common sense, can really help you put together something suitable for a laggy occasion. Prims are not the Enemy, but there are certain properties of prims that are. Flex is the obvious one, and tinyprims (like you'll find in most jewelry), scupties are less than ideal but sometimes a nessessary evil (as we'll see), alpha textures and invisiprims are NOT your friend here, and illuminated prims, glow, and bling/particles are very definitely no-go for this sort of thing (and in general, shame on you, bling wearer). It also seems to help psychologically if your clothes are good quality, with care put into their textures and lines, just to abate the whole 'I FEEL NAKED WITHOUT MY PRIM CUFFS' noobish feeling.

Nivaya's 55 ARC outfit - For me, the trick is to convince myself wearing a lot. Sure, I could venture forth in some jeans and a t-shirt, but if I did that, I may as well just don a nice low-lag solid black skin like some sort of awesome ninja and not bother at all. As it stands, for this outfit, I've tried to make as much use of layers as I possibly can. My corset and capris are on the underwear layers, the belt in two parts on the shirt and pants layer (funny story, I didn't notice until I was doing the credits for this that I was wearing parts of two different belts, but hey, it looks okay, I won't tell if you don't), and the coat on jacket and skirt layers. The ornamentation on the belt helps me feel a bit dressed-up and negates my need for jewelry a bit, the open stitches on the shoulders of the coat, and the tail, makes the outfit feel a little more substancial while still being a bit quirky. The hair, I love. It's from the GNUbie store, and is one of Pudge's older styles. The version I'm wearing in the picture is a copy I've modified, I've removed the spiral curls from the sides, which left the ARC of the hair the same (16) but as people are always banging on about, twisted torii produce much more lag than...I dunno. A box maybe. Point is, I feel a bit more smug having taken this step. Also, glove manicures, to help the ensemble feel /finished/.

Persephone's 46 ARC outfit - Perse outdid me! She ACTUALLY outdid me! I was properly scandalized. It comes down to the shoes, in this case. The Baby Monkey Ballet Flats I chose are a dainty 3 prims, whereas Perse's Shiny Things Ballet Flats are a hefty 16, but the difference comes in the types of prims they are. You see, mine are scupties, Perse's are regular prims. And the fact that my shoes are sculpted makes them a whole 9 ARC points higher than Perse's. That said, they're still pretty hard to beat as far as shoes go. For her outfit, Perse has gone a less complicated route than I, favouring comfortable casual simplicity, with a yummy use of colour, and as ever, great quality. I believe she even forsook her beloved prim pant cuffs. The real surprise for me came with her hair, Diversity's Brat, which clocked in at the same ARC as mine, 16, despite being rather more elaborate. So in this case, I am forced to bow to Perse's superiour low ARC-ing, due to my forgetting to take sculpts into account. Well done and fair play to you, lovely.

Of course, there are occasions where you don't care quite so desperately what you look like. Things like fairs and expos and extremely crowded hunts, where you're just another 'body', and everyone's mostly concentrating on trying to get textures to rez, or as was the case at the recent 7Seas Fishaversary, catching fish in a sim crammed to the gills (ba-dum-tchhhh) with people running fishing scripts. And that's when it pays to have a less lovely, but rather more streamlined outfit. Still staying clear of ninja skins...

Niv's 1 ARC outfit - The basis of this outfit is the skin. It's an Eloh mod I made around the time of Hair Fair last year. My original plan had been to edit it so that it would have a shaved head effect, I'm not scared of pulling a Britney, I just don't want to look so pedestrian as to have just plain taken my hair off and left it at that. Unfortunately, it turns out the reason there are so few skins with hair or stubble on the head is that it's extremely, incredibly difficult to do. Not that I'm any expert in these matters, but the seams, the boundries, and getting it all to look even...wow. Gave me a whole new type of respect for skinners who can pull it off. So instead, I modified my plan, and decided to tie it in with the system mohawk I had made some while ago during a craze for making Allegory Malaprop style 'hawks to make system hair a little more paletable, and added some colourful tattoos on the head, to match the overlong rainbow eyelashes and painted-on bindi I'd put on it for an effect of 'something'. The other thing here that most fashionistas wouldn't dream of wearing, and probably couldn't find in this day and age, is system boots. These were one of very first things I picked up when I started Second Life, almost two years ago, and have been trusty emergencywear since, they don't look too bad...as long as you don't look too hard, or from the side, or...POINT IS, I'm not barefoot here. With this, some clothes with buttloads of detail in the texture, like the jacket, and the jeans, and I've managed to throw together a look that actually almost is wearable in public, sort of. Also, I have once more outdone Perse!

So, yeah. Go low prim. It's not hard, it does help reduce at least your own lag and you get to feel a bit self-righteous about it while not actually looking too horrible. Mm.

Credits:

Persephone:

Skin- Curio Sundust- Breeze - Mauve Mist 2
Hair - Diversity Hair - Brat - Hershey Dipped
Shirt- Mayuki nozaki- Liru-Flower Dress- Camisole
Shrug- Silent Sparrow - Shurggie top - Sea
Jeans- Sn@tch - Moroccan Jeans(Blue)
Flats- Shiny Things - Ballet Flat - Black
Eye- Miriel - Violet Plant (Standard)

Nivaya 1:

Skin - Ashia Designs - Timeless 2009 Bushfire Appeal
Hair - Pudge - Bee-utiful Bee-Hive - Crayon Red (edited)
Corset - silentsparrow (special) luxe corset (alternate)
Jacket - Schadenfreude - Ghost Revenant Jacket - Open, Open Sleeves
Pants - Savvy? - Roslin Capris (underpant)
Belt - Pixeldolls - Black (Empress bottom, Dauphine top)
Shoes - Baby Monkey Classic Ballet Flats - Conker Brown
Eyes - Miriel - Marine (standard)
Manicure - CandyNail - Basic Nail - Silver

Nivaya 2:

Skin - selfmade - Bindi and rainbowlashes and tattoos skin (eloh mod)
Hair - selfmade - Niv System Mohawk
Shirt - ETD Striped Top (silver)
Jacket - Bare Rose - Chronicle Gray Jacket
Jeans - Fashionably Dead - Graffiti Jeans
Boots - Tall Boots black motif hip high (creator unknown, ancient freebie)
Nails and fingertape - SiniStyle Taped Fingers and Black Nails (index, middle, pinky)
Tattoo - TCinSHELTER ChainhartTattoo

Pose credits:

Pic 1: [LAP] Maxim Girls
Pic 2: [LAP] Cuteness (from Kewt as a Button set)
Pic 3: Hiccup - My Brain!
Pic 4, L to R: Schadenfreude - Eh, Piss Off; [LAP] She's Lethal (from Spice set)